Withering at My Touch

Anja Pihla has always hidden her sharp intellect and knowledge of deadly flora behind a sweet, clumsy exterior. It's a useful mask, especially when her botanist father is taken captive by the monstrous 'Blight Lord of Kivikallas,' a horned recluse whose very touch causes life to decay into dust. To save him, Anja offers a trade: her life for his. Now a prisoner in a castle of stone and dying gardens, Anja discovers the beast, Ohto, is not a monster by choice. He's a man bound by a devastating curse, isolated and tormented. As she uses her secret skills to bring life back to his blighted world, a fragile trust blooms between them. But Anja's former suitor is determined to 'rescue' her and expose Ohto, and the curse itself has a hidden, final stage that no one, not even Ohto, saw coming. Can Anja devise a way to break the curse without making the ultimate sacrifice, or will her growing feelings for the beast condemn them both to wither away?